1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of optical signal reception and demodulation. In particular, the present invention relates to a novel optical homodyne DPSK receiver. The present invention also provides a novel noise reduction circuit for use in association with the receiver of the present invention but which will, undoubtedly, find many other obvious uses.
2. Background Information
When transmitting and receiving a signal over an optical fibre network, only very small error probabilities in signal demodulation are considered acceptable. For instance, in relation to voice transmission, an error probability of one in a thousand is considered acceptable. However, in data transmission, an error probability of one in one hundred million at most is desired. Accordingly, it will be understood that it is greatly desired to reduce background noise in an optical receiver.
One method used for efficient reception, with low noise, is known as DPSK--Differential Phase Shift Keying. It has been found, however, as reported by J. Salz in "Modulation and Detection for Coherent Lightwave Communications"--Jun., 1986, Telecommunications Magazine, that the conventional method of decreasing error probability, by raising signal strength, is strictly limited in DPSK signal processing. This is because the ratio of penalty in dB to signaling rate/laser linewidth becomes infinite at values of signaling rate/laser linewidth approaching 200.
In a DPSK system, the modulation process is similar to that of a Phase Shift Keying (PSK) system, except that binary data are differentially encoded before application to an optical modulator. Therefore data are conveyed by the difference in the carrier phase in two consecutive bit intervals each shown by T. On the receiver side, the received optical signal in a particular bit interval, say k.sup.th bit interval, is presented as ##EQU1## where P.sub.s denotes the received optical power; .alpha..sub.k is a data bit representing a "+1" or a "-1"; .omega..sub.o is the angular optical carrier frequency and .theta.(t) is the laser phase noise.
In a conventional homodyne DPSK receiver, a received optical signal is divided between two branches; one half is delayed by T seconds, the other half is directly combined with the delayed one. Such a receiver performs well with noise-free electronic amplifiers and minimal shot noise. In practice, however, because of shot noise and thermal noise, the performance of homodyne DPSK is poor and the heterodyne version is used instead.